Every New Beginning (Some Other Beginning's End)
by ambitiousbutrubbish
Summary: Bull watches him go and maybe he would've given up on them, but there's the dragon tooth ring that Dorian wears, a pair to his own necklace. The delicately carved band a promise as much as it is a fairytale. And Bull wants. - Dorian/Iron Bull


**A/N:** Minor Female!Inquisitor/Cullen mostly just because I wanted to have a dog. Post-Trespasser, so spoilers for that.

Sequel to **And Must My Name Until I Die Be No More Than An Alibi**

* * *

Maybe it's because she's his best friend or maybe it's because he wants to put off the conversation with Bull for as long as he possibly can, but the Inquisitor is the first one Dorian tells that he will soon be returning to Tevinter for good. Oh, they've all known he would in some abstract way - it's been his plan since he first fled the Imperium, and he's been spending increasingly long blocks of time there gathering political allies and putting down roots in the Magisterium - but his father is dead, assassinated, and he is a Magister in his own right now, and he is going, really _going_ , back to Tevinter. To stay.

It's different when it's happening. When it's not just a pipe dream for the distant future. He thought he'd have years. Years to just _be_ ; to be safe and to be happy and to be with his friends and be in the world he helped to save. To live. To be with the man he loved, against all odds. Dorian never expected to get married, never even wanted it to be perfectly honest, tainted as the idea of marriage has come to be for him after his father trying to _change_ him to force him into it, the way marriage is tangled up with everything he has fought against happening to him. He never expected to have something like the Inquisitor and Cullen have now, the marriage and the dog and the house for themselves away from everything. But he had thought, he had hoped so desperately, that he could be with Bull for at least a while before they had to part again. Not long enough, never long enough, but _years_.

The thought is almost enough to stop Dorian seeking out the Inquisitor, but that is only him being cruel. Angry at the wrong people. And he needs someone to talk to about leaving, needs to tell _someone_ before he can gather the courage to tell everyone.

Cullen has hardly left her side since she returned from turning back the Qunari, half her arm gone and an air of loss, despite their victory. She had told the two of them of Solas' plan late that night, and regardless the horror inherent, Dorian can't help but feeling a little sorry for him. He has seen only too well how a desire to restore glories of the past can go too far, past the point of no return, where the present and the future are no longer considerations. So it's no surprise to find the Inquisitor with her husband now, sitting on the old War Table with Cullen standing between her legs, their foreheads pressed together. There is jealousy in the pang in Dorian's heart at the sight, but it is far more happiness for them. They are more than deserving of their love, of this moment of peace, and Dorian is loath to disturb it, even though he must if he is ever going to get around to his goodbyes.

He coughs softly, and the Inquisitor's eyes snap open and Cullen whirls to face him. They both look mildly annoyed at being interrupted, but the expression fades when they realise that it's Dorian smirking at them. "If I had've known you were just standing around, I would have conscripted the pair of you into helping me pack. I could use a warrior-type to lift some things. Not that I can't do it myself, of course, but I do like to watch you work. All that bending and straining."

The Inquisitor huffs a laugh at that but Cullen has always been less inclined to let him get away with his false flippancy. "Shouldn't Bull be providing enough of that to satisfy you?"

"Yes, well" Dorian starts, and he refuses to let the smile fall from his face "I'm sure he will be, once I tell him it's needed. Or perhaps he won't. He's not overly happy about my leaving." and his smile feels like it was carved into his face with a knife.

"Oh, Dorian" the Inquisitor sighs, and Dorian has heard that phrase more than enough in his life, angry and frustrated and fed up and condescending, but never in her whispered tone, twisted at the end with pain for him. She nudges Cullen back, slips off the War Table and darts around her husband to gather Dorian up in her arms. She is a good head shorter than him, but his face ends up buried in her neck somehow anyway, his knees buckling a little as she supports him.

Dorian doesn't cry, but it's a close thing. Instead he just breaths, deep and slow, commits this feeling of being held, supported, loved by his best friend, to memory. Who knows if he will ever feel it again. "I could order you not to leave, you know" she says, and Dorian chuckles and it only sounds a little wet.

"You're disbanding the Inquisition. I don't work for you anymore."

The Inquisitor pulls back, but keeps her hand wrapped around his shoulder, looks him in the eyes. "I could order you as a friend."

"I've never been much good at following orders" Dorian says, and there is regret, there. Regret that he can't just leave everything else behind because someone wants him to. Regret that his own stubbiness and idealism is taking him away from this.

"No." The Inquisitor says, and there are tears in her eyes to match the ones that have sprung up in his own. "And I'm so proud of you."

"You saved the world, my dear" Dorian says. "Be proud of yourself."

Her hand slides off him as he steps back to leave, but Cullen catches him first, grasps the shoulder that the Inquisitor let free. "Go with blessings, my friend" he says, and Dorian needs to leave right now, before he starts crying and never manages to make it out the door.

As he gets his hand on the doorknob, the Inquisitor calls out one last time. "I love you" and Dorian turns around again, rushes forward, swings his arms around both their necks. Hugs them tight, and starts to cry. They hug him back, just as fiercely.

His friends, that he never thought he'd find. His family.

-00000-

He lingers with the Inquisitor and Cullen for far longer than planned, and by the time he makes it back to the room he shares with Bull the sun has set, though the Inquisitor's tears are still staining his collar.

When he opens the door to find Bull awake and waiting for him, Dorian fights back a brief flash of panic, the knowledge that he could just turn around right now; leave, and put this off another day. But he quickly dismisses it. Now he's started his farewells, it seems foolish to leave them any longer.

Instead, he walks slowly over to the bed, _their_ bed, and sits down on top of the covers. He's gathering his words together, everything he wants to say to Bull, the way his heart years for him, even though he only has to reach out to touch him. How much worse will it be, when they're no longer together. When the gap can not be filled by hands and mouths, fingers wrapped around horns and waists. But Bull beats him to it. Since they met Bull has been trying to anticipate what Dorian would say or how he would act and in the beginning he was always hit and miss. But in the intervening years he has become scarily good at it.

"You're leaving" he says, and Dorian can only nod at him. Words, for once, caught in his throat. "I still want to go with you."

Dorian can feel his eyes filling again, and he's not going to be able to cry at all once he returns to Tevinter, so it would be best to let it all out now. Though his voice remains steady, despite the tears. "I wish you could, _amatus_ ".

Bull reaches for him, silently, and Dorian pitches forward, kisses him hard and desperate and tasting of salt. Bull gentles the kiss, drags Dorian to him and undresses him slowly, carefully, like every inch of exposed skin is precious. There was a time when Dorian would squirm at this, tell Bull to move faster. Now he hiccups a sob and Bull catches it with his own mouth, covers it with whispered words in Qunlat. A language that was never meant for romance, but Bull manages it anyway.

The night is never long enough for them.

-00000-

Dorian leaves two days later, with the sun at its peak in the sky. Bull is sure there's some metaphor there, the sun so high when he is so low, but he has never been much given to flowery speech. He feels like his heart has been ripped from his chest, wrapped up all pretty in robes and kohl and glitter and mounted on a horse to go where he can not follow.

He's learned a lot these last few years. The Qun teaches that it is everything necessary to survive, that all knowledge can be found within it. Even after he left, he believed it for a long time. The Ben-Hassrath taught him how to read people, situations, to put little pieces together to fit into the world's puzzle. The Qun taught him that everyone has a place, a job that they are; and the need to fulfil that is purpose, is living.

When Bull first came South, he soon realised that people were far more complicated then puzzles, could not be reduced to needs. On Seheron they had blamed it on the war, the way that the 'Vint's actions were random and unpredictable. In the Tal-Vashoth it was madness. But over time, Bull came to accept it as the way people are - irrational, denying their needs for flights of fancy. He pitied them for a long time, the way they hurt themselves, the way they fought and fought against time and nature and the things that can not be beaten, struggled against an ocean that did not feel the ripples they left. Thought about how much easier it would be for them to be under the Qun. Thought how much more content he was, to not be like them. To know his place. To be what the Qun made him.

He still thinks it would be easier, but he also thinks it would be wrong.

Wants, Bull has discovered, are just as important to personhood as needs, Maybe more. A _thing,_ has needs. A tree needs sunlight and water, a weapon needs to be sharpened, an animal needs food, a building needs maintenance. A person has needs too but a person also _wants_. To have more, to be more, to change and grow and own frivolous objects and lie back in the sun and just let the world revolve around them.

The Qun teaches that you give the people you care about what they need, not what they want. But what a person wants is who they _are_. Everyone has needs. It's what they want that sets them apart. It's that they _want_ is what makes them people.

The Qun teaches that only needs are important.

The Qun, Bull has decided, is full of of shit.

But wanting is so new to him, it would be easy to go back to the way he used to be. Not a person.

The two crystals around Dorian's neck clink softly together has he turns his head to look over everyone for what may very well be the last time. His eyes settle on Bull last and the smile on his face is determined and set and devastatingly sad.

" _Kadan_ " Bull says, and it's one last plea, begging even though Dorian hates it. Too many bad memories; fear and blood magic and murder.

But Dorian only leans down in his saddle, kisses him in the open in front of everyone, friends and passers-by alike. And it's unusual. Dorian isn't shy, isn't ashamed of Bull, not even of himself anymore, but he is private, and long, slow kisses like this in public are rare. Bull reaches for him in return, one hand on his cheek and the other on his collarbone and it would be so easy right now, so easy to slip his hand down a little further and crush the sending crystal that pairs with Bull's own.

They are nothing but _want_. Dorian is returning to Tevinter to change his homeland, and that would be easier with no distractions, a new start, nothing to tie him to the South. And without Dorian, Bull fears where what he wants will take him, that he will lose himself to his desire and storm into Tevinter, his own safety be damned. _Dorian's_ safety be damned. Without the crystals, Bull can go back to being a creature of nothing but need, and Dorian, eventually, will find new things, new people, to want.

But the kiss ends before Bull makes a move, as slow as it had begun, and Dorian settles back straight on his horse. He's not crying, he wouldn't in public, but his eyes are misty when they tear away from Bull and out onto the bridge from Skyhold.

"When they erect a statue for us, I expect you to make sure they get my face exactly right. I would hate for future generations to be deprived of this perfection" he says, before turning his horse and galloping from the castle.

Bull watches him go and maybe he would've given up on them, but there's the dragon tooth ring that Dorian wears, a pair to his own necklace. The delicately carved band a promise as much as it is a fairytale. And Bull _wants_. Wants Dorian to come back. Wants him to go, and fulfil his dream. Wants to go with him. Wants to stay with the Chargers. Wants him to be safe. Wants him to succeed.

"I'm gonna tell them his nose was _way_ bigger than it is. A real honker." Sera says, and the scattered laughter is watery, but it is real.

* * *

 **A/N:** Hoo-boy do I have _thoughts_ about the Qun as basically a cult that uses depersonalisation by a control of the idea of needs reinforced with guilt and fear as a means of forcing compliance and societal construction.

Now with sequels: **The Enduring Moment, The Heart Of Warmth** , **Maul The World Like A Carnival Bear Set Free** and **Burn Down The City Just To Show You The Lights**


End file.
